Seriously: Will you show me around?

The AZ9345 is on right now. And it sounds pretty damn good to me. I’m listening to Smog’s latest album, <i>A River Ain’t Too Much to Love</i>, and god, I love it. I love it. I don’t even know exactly what it is. I keep wondering, “What is it? What’s so great about this album?”

Not how. I mean to say: I should tell you something about the circumstances surrounding my personal act of listening.

The music we made in Genie Boom was not unlike the music made by the pumps and steam lines and reactors of Firmenich. Michelle drummed on garbage cans, a red school bell, a gas tank, whatever banged. Todd pressed buttons on his Casio synthesizer and Roland drum machine. I plugged five cheap guitars&mdash;old Silvertones and Kays, before they became popular&mdash;into whatever amps I could find, turned the knobs on my effects pedals all the way up, and screamed the lines from my poems into the guitars’ pick-ups.

Back in the spring of 1986, I was visiting a hi-fi show in Lucerne, Switzerland. In the KEF/McIntosh/Perreaux room, I was engaged by a voluble American, who wanted to talk about the changes I was making with the English magazine <I>Hi-Fi News</I>. The conversation shifted to the hotel bar, then to a restaurant. The American was one Tony Federici, who at that time was distributing Perreaux gear in the US. With an education in the philosophy of science, Tony's comments were insightful and challenging. He was never at a loss for an opinion! After I moved to the US to take the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/352">editorial reins at <I>Stereophile</I></A>, Tony stayed in touch, and many were the conversations we had about audio magazines, the audio business, and music.

Mentioning the new <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias"><I>Stereophile</I&gt; blog</A> to folks this past week, I usually got two questions. First, "Cool, what will it be about?" Then, "What, in fact, is a blog?"